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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416970">Journey Into Night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arbonne/pseuds/amethyst-noir'>amethyst-noir (Arbonne)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompt Collection [92]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Eye of Agamatto, F/M, Fix-It, Friendship/Love, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Meant To Be, One Night Stands, Protective Tony Stark, Soul Stone (Marvel), but happy really, depending on how you read it, possible emotional manipulation, so much more, that will become more, with a hint of bittersweet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:01:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,792</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416970</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arbonne/pseuds/amethyst-noir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One human in the possession of two Infinity Stones. Tony should be scared of him but could only feel sorrow that it had come to this. Stephen taking the two of them because Tony had screamed "no!" the nanosecond the proposition had filtered through to his dying brain.</p>
<p>(The Time and the Soul stone don't want to be alone anymore. So they search out compatible vessels to house them.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompt Collection [92]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1126062</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bad Things Happen Bingo</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Journey Into Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Descaladumidera/gifts">Descaladumidera</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A very, very long time ago the lovey @descaladumidera sent me this:<br/><i>I have the feeling your inbox is rather full and I don't want to clutter it more, but I have a prompt that's been stuck in my head for some time now. No need to write it if you don't want to, of course. :) After Thanos is defeated, the Stones spread themselves across the universe again. But to prevent to be ever used in that way again, they search for living vessels to attach themselves to. The Soul Stone chooses Tony, the Time Stone Stephen. But how do you deal with becoming an Infinity Stone?</i></p>
<p>What a wonderful prompt. It took me a while to come up with something but here it is, even if it is just the beginning of their journey. The Tony/Pepper is very dialed down here, but since this, apart from one minor (*cough*) difference, canon-compliant until the moment a dying Tony leans against that rock, it's here and it's not going away. Tony is more than capable of loving more than one person at the same time and Stephen needs all the love and care in the universe.</p>
<p>@badthingshappenbingo prompt: <i>Take Me Instead</i></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"No," Tony said immediately, almost before the last of Stephen's words had faded away into nothingness. "No way in hell, heaven, earth or anywhere else. Why did you even come to me with this? You should have known…" He came to an abrupt stop as the horrified realization set it. "You already said yes." He only dared to whisper those words, suddenly deathly afraid of Stephen and what he had done. "Which one?"</p>
<p>Stephen smiled, patient and gentle. Tony had never before seen him look like this. <em>That's because he's not Stephen anymore</em>, he reminded himself. <em>He's…</em> He couldn't even finish the thought.</p>
<p>"Time, of course," Stephen answered. "I've been its guardian for so long, it was only fitting. Besides, it wanted me. The Soul Stone wants <em>you</em>, Tony."</p>
<p>"That thing killed Nat!" That was only the tip of the iceberg the but the thing that occupied most of his thoughts. Those that weren't overwhelmed by Stephen's sheer stupidity, that was. "I never want to see it again, let alone have it touch me or," he shuddered, "inside of me."</p>
<p>Stephen said nothing, just looked at him with unending patience and compassion. Well, he had all the time in the universe now, after all.</p>
<p>"Where is it?" Tony asked some time later. Could have been seconds, could have been hours. He had no idea.</p>
<p>In answer, Stephen held up his right hand - still trembling, still full of scars, and why couldn't a fucking Infinity Stone fix <em>that</em>? The Soul Stone was lying in his palm. One human in the possession of two Infinity Stones. Tony should be scared of him but could only feel sorrow that it had come to this. Stephen taking the two of them because Tony had screamed "no!" the nanosecond the proposition had filtered through to his dying brain.</p>
<p>"Not that… thing." Tony looked away. "The green one. Yours." The word felt as if torn out of his very soul.</p>
<p>"Oh." All that intelligence but Stephen was failing spectacularly right now. "It's here." He touched his chest, same vague gesture that could mean his heart or his lungs. Basically it was somewhere in his ribcage. Tony shivered once again. This, right here, was a waking nightmare. A dying one. Whatever. Why couldn't he even die in peace, without the universe having one last cruel joke at his expense?</p>
<p>"You really meant inside of you." Just like the arc reactor had been inside of him, once upon a time. An intruder, forced into a space where it didn't belong, where there wasn't enough space for it… the thought of Stephen, one of his oldest friends - who had been abused so much by life - being forced to go through something like that was worse than almost anything else. "Does it hurt?"</p>
<p>Stephen did him the favor of not lying. "A little bit. In the beginning. Initial insertion and bonding… wasn't pleasant. But that has faded, apart from some vague feeling of warmth and a permanent awareness."</p>
<p>"No pain?"</p>
<p>Stephen grimaced, looking more like himself than ever before the moment he'd come to Tony and took his soul out onto this scary astral plane place of his seconds before his death. It was barely believable that now that was the normal thing here. It really was all about perspective.  </p>
<p>"Stephen?" he asked when there was no answer.</p>
<p>"No more than before," he whispered, averting his eyes.</p>
<p>The Soul Stone had vanished from his hand but Tony was very aware that it was still here, patiently waiting, still wanting to get its claws into him. Stephen might be victim by choice here but not the preferred one. He reached out to take Stephen's right hand anyway. Stephen let himself be moved like a doll and said nothing as both of them looked at the trembling mess of his hand.</p>
<p>"Can't it do anything against this? Reverse time or something? Seems unfair that you're the master of time itself and can't get rid of…" He broke off, for once in his life trying to be sensitive. For whatever remained of his life. The was very conscious of his own personal time running out. On same vague level of awareness he could sense Pepper and Rhodey next to his burned and fallen body, could hear Peter's desolate pleas.</p>
<p>"The disability?" Stephen suggested with a dry smile. "It's that, nothing less. I'm no longer offended by that particular truth." He offered his left hand for inspection. It didn't look any better, maybe even a little bit worse. "Some things aren't meant to be fixed," he continued, sounding far too sure and resigned about it for Tony's taste.</p>
<p>"It's unfair!" Tony protested but was ignored.</p>
<p>Stephen nodded and looked towards the spot where Tony's body lay dying. "But this? This can and should be fixed. You can go back, Tony, live your life, have your family."</p>
<p>"With an Infinity Stone inside of me!" He was almost screaming in an effort to not cry. "What sort of life would that be?"</p>
<p>"A long one," was the calm answer. "Very long. You wouldn't die today, or in a few decades. Possible never. But you could be with your family for the rest of <em>their</em> lives. It's cold comfort, I know, but comfort nonetheless."</p>
<p>"So an eternity with the thing that killed one of my best friends inside of me and with you at my side. Am I summarizing this correctly?"</p>
<p>Stephen took his hands back and crossed them behind his back. Tony missed the contact between them immediately. "Only if you want to. I'm not going to lie; the stones would prefer to stay in close contact because they've been apart for so long and the Soul Stone's special composition would force it back to Vormir if you don't consent. I can't hold both of them, even if I wished to do so."</p>
<p>Funny, how stilted and old-fashioned Stephen's speech tended to become when the stakes were really high. Tony shook his head in an attempt to gather his fraying thoughts. <em>Concentrate, man! Stephen, Soul Stone, fucking Vormir.</em></p>
<p>"So you would go to Vormir to keep a <em>stone</em> company?" Had Stephen always been this insane or was this a new development?</p>
<p>A shrug. "Not forever. But yes, I would."</p>
<p>"What about Earth? <em>Your</em> family?" He already knew the answer, of course, but took some kind in perverse pleasure in forcing Stephen to say it out loud but Stephen didn't say anything. He only took a step back.</p>
<p>"Is your decision made then?" he asked calmly, but his eyes showed his hurt and a desperate plea for Tony to reconsider.</p>
<p><em>Yes</em>, he wanted to say but didn't. He looked at Stephen, back to his own dying body and back to Stephen again, helpless in the face of indecision and horror. He hoped his answer was clear anyway.</p>
<p>Apparently not because Stephen didn't get the message and his sales pitch got more desperate. "You'll die in agony, Tony, within minutes if not seconds after your return." The calmness vanished, as the real human being finally came through. "And I <em>have</em> to bring you back before I leave, there's no way around it. If I could I would send you back healthy, I would turn back time and keep you from doing it, I would do anything to spare you, if only I..." Fuck, now Stephen was crying. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know it would end like this or I would have..."</p>
<p>This. Them as the chosen hosts, vessels, apartments whatever for two Infinity Stones, while the other four did whatever they wanted to do. Maybe search out hosts of their own, Tony had no idea and no real desire to ask. Right now only two of the damn things very of any concern to him. And what a big fucking concern it was.</p>
<p>"Tony? Time grows short. We need an answer, now." Stephen's face was still wet with tears but a little bit of his composure had returned.</p>
<p><em>We</em> not <em>I</em>.</p>
<p>Tony closed his eyes and concentrated on the tether connecting him to his body. His burned, poisoned, dying body which had allowed him to endure so much.</p>
<p>He'd never wanted to have something foreign in his body ever again but he didn't want to die, either. He wanted, no, <em>needed</em> to go back to Pep and see his little girl grow up. He also didn't want to exile Stephen onto a world as hostile as Vormir, with two pseudo-maybe-sentient stones full of exotic energy as his only company.</p>
<p>He took a deep breath and forced himself to speak. "If," he said slowly, still testing the possibility of acceptance out, "I say yes, what will happen to you?"</p>
<p>He longed to wipe the tears from Stephen's face but forced himself to stay still and await the answer. "I'll stay on Earth," was the eventual answer, "as the guardian of the Time Stone and the New York Sanctum. You'll never have to see me again, being on the same planet would be enough for them. They've been alone for so long that this would be like living together in a one-room apartment."</p>
<p>Lonely energy. Who would have thought? "So they can communicate with each other?"</p>
<p>"Of course they can. They're not sentient beings like we know them but something completely different. I don't know much more than that." Tony even believed him. Stephen gestured at the ever-thinning tether between Tony and his body. "Please, you have to choose."</p>
<p>His family, his friends - including Stephen, his one-time lover who he had lost years ago and only recently found again - or death.</p>
<p>Not really a choice, after all, even if the price was life with an Infinity Stone.</p>
<p>"Yes," he said, surprising himself how steady his voice sounded. He felt anything but, really. "I'll become your partner in stone-keeping. But only under the condition that you won't be a stranger." He smiled at the horrible pun and delighted in the dazed realization spreading over Stephen's angular face. "We're in this together and I expect you to be the one who breaks the news to Pep and Rhodey. They're going to hate you," he warned. They hadn't been Stephen's biggest fans in the past but they had been sad to hear of his accident, years after his and Tony's spectacular one-night stand. They would adapt.</p>
<p>"They'll be so happy to have you alive that they won't even notice me being there," Stephen said softly, once again holding out his hands. "Tony? Are you sure?" The Soul Stone once again was in his right hand.</p>
<p>He took the offered hands with all the care he could muster, trying really hard to not hurt Stephen. The guy had been hurt more than enough for a lifetime or ten.</p>
<p>They both watched in silence as the thing that wanted Tony, personally, floated up, clearly waiting for an engraved invitation.</p>
<p>"Yes," he repeated. "Let's go and have a life." He tried to smile but failed miserably. "I always knew that I was irresistible but this is a new low, even for me."</p>
<p>Stephen choked on a laugh at that so Tony took it as a win.</p>
<p>The Stone came nearer, went through his clothes and into his chest, somewhere left from where the arc reactor had once occupied space.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, there was no pain. Just a feeling of warmth and contentment, of something long missed settling into the place it had always been supposed to rest in.</p>
<p>"Oh," he gasped, shocked, delighted and sad that Stephen's experience apparently had been a much worse one. He longed to reach out and make it happen again, under better circumstances, but that was beyond his - <em>their</em> - power.</p>
<p>In that very moment the vow to never let something like this happen again was made. He never knew if it had been him, the Soul Stone or both of them together - but Stephen and the Time Stone must never to hurt or abused again. It was now their shared duty to keep them safe from harm.</p>
<p>Also, no more sacrifices on their behalf. Never again. Neither Tony nor the Soul Stone had ever wanted that burden. So many losses, too many to filter out one very special one, no matter how hard Tony tried, and the Soul Stone was mourning each and every one of them.</p>
<p>Tony opened his eyes, feeling the Soul Stone as a gentle warmth deep inside his chest. Stephen looked at him with wonder and awe on his face, his eyes tinted a little bit greener than ever before. The whole picture was breathtaking even in this immaterial plane of existence.</p>
<p>"Tony?" Stephen whispered, obviously insecure and confused.</p>
<p>He looked almost ethereal and was probably the most beautiful being Tony ever had the privilege of looking at. Spending time with him suddenly didn't seem to be that much of a chore anymore, as memories of the good times between them broke through the distance years and pain had brought them.</p>
<p>Tony smiled at him, testing out this whole love and adoration feeling he could feel coming from his new companion.</p>
<p>"Let's go home. It's time for you to meet the family you're going to be a part of," he said and took a step aside to allow Stephen to do his thing.</p>
<p>It would be okay, he knew. Pep and Morgan would need some time to adjust, Rhodey would stand by his side as always and everything would fall into place. After lots of screaming and crying, probably, but that was okay. He could deal with that. <em>They</em> could. All four of them.</p>
<p>Eventually, there would only be him and Stephen and their charges left. The thought was far more bitter than sweet but also inevitable. Tony was determined to enjoy the time he had with his family while building the necessary foundation for his eventual future with Stephen.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Tony opened his eyes, still hurting all over but already mending thanks to the influence of his newest little friend. He smiled at Pepper, nodded at Rhodey and looked at Peter for a moment of recognition before his eyes settled on Stephen who was far - too far - away from his position, kneeling on the ground with his head down as if in prayer. Or deep sorrow. He jumped at Tony's voice and looked up with disbelief and wonder written all over his face.</p>
<p>"Doc! Come over here and explain this mess!" he called, relishing in the startled confusion his words caused.</p>
<p>When Stephen finally arrived at his side he grabbed his wrist - gently - and tugged him down until he was kneeling on the ground on Tony's right side, with Pepper and Rhodey on his left. "Tell them," he commanded, "and then we'll figure out a way to go on from there."</p>
<p>Stephen took a deep breath, some sort of green energy swirling around his body, just like the orange counterpart that had engulfed Tony's, and searched for the necessary words to explain the unexplainable.</p>
<p>Tony made sure to hold on to Stephen, to offer comfort and support as well as to keep him from running away.</p>
<p>"Tony?" Pepper asked, staring at him and him alone while Rhodey tried to figure out if Stephen was friend or foe this time round.</p>
<p>There was so little time left with them, he could already feel it running out, and promised himself once again to treasure every second of it.</p>
<p><em>You'll never be alone again</em>, a new but friendly voice - more of a feeling, really - reassured him. <em>We'll always be there for you.</em></p>
<p>Tony looked at Stephen and the Time Stone and smiled. "I know," he whispered and squeezed Stephen's hand gently, getting a distracted but genuine smile in return.</p>
<p>Then he allowed himself to concentrate fully on the present. "Hey, Pep. It's gonna be okay, promise. You know me, always adopting and bringing home strays. This time it's an older one, who ran away once but finally came back where he belongs."</p>
<p>His words made Pepper choke on a surprised laugh. Her eyes flickered to Stephen and she took a moment for a nod of recognition before her eyes settled on Tony again.</p>
<p>"Don't ever scare me like that again," she demanded and Tony nodded. He could do that. He could do a lot of things now.</p>
<p>The not very gentle punch to his shoulder followed by her forehead on the same spot, marked the beginning of the rest of his life. He held on to his wife with his left arm, the fingers of his already healing right hand entangled with Stephen's shaking ones.</p>
<p><em>I love you</em>, he - they - thought, thinking of no one in particular but everyone.</p>
<p>Including the damned, wonderful green and orange things that had given him this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Something a little bit different from me. No cuddling and no sleeping in each others arms. I know, I know. Sorry, it'll come up again, I'm sure of that. 🤣</p>
<p>I adore the idea of Tony and Stephen having had a one-night stand years and years ago (before IM1), losing touch and finally finding each other again after a decade of trauma, loss and pain to try to heal together. In this universe they will have all the time to do exactly that.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for reading. 🦋</p></blockquote></div></div>
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